Great game design makes the complex simple, replayability maximum, and abstraction credible.

I play to make my own history.

Cross posted from Consimworld:

Lee I just wanted to post a "jolly good show" on some of the most robust rules I've seen in a war game out of the wrapper - in the shape of Bomber Command.

I just came up for air having finally finished my first session and I had not one rules question or ambivalence - not even a double meaning to contemplate, you've done a wonderful errata-free job in my opinion (and that one erratum I did find related to a mere example of play - and a minor one at that!).

Hat's off sir! My bomber boys landed after an outing to Saarbrucken, a D level city in the south, and whilst our bombing was remarkably on the dot, we lost sufficient heavies to render a 14-point victory margin and a draw. Of 9 Mosquitos reported lost, only 2 were happily confirmed as accurate. We however, could not get the target to burn as as we'd liked, and we put that down to the a rookie effort in distributing the HE and incendiary loads in a productive pattern. We don't know where "Butcher" Harris will send us next time - but we plan on doing better.

Rhetorical question: Can Bomber command be played satisfyingly solitaire?

Answer: YES - and I'd rate it a 8/10 in doing so. A very high rating indeed.

And here's a pic of the Main Raid fully detected on the leg home - showing some modding on my part that took my fancy. That's Aachen further up burning to some Mosies that have long passed. We hit Essen and Bremmerhaven too.

(The second pic is Saarbrucken under fire - not enough bomb type pairings to convert into main fires despite a remarkable first-time on-target bomb run with no drift.)

Bomber Command finally made it to the shores of South African and survived customs!

First impressions upon finding the gamebox inside a large cardboard box filled with more styrofoam than my bin could handle ... Lee, the box-art is by far the best I have in my collection and has usurped the forever-longstanding Flat Top RM box-art as my favourite!

Aside from the fact that the pack of British cards were mysteriously open (and all accounted for), the contents are simply beautiful. The maps are great and the player aids really look good.

Got some rule reading and counter clipping to do this week, so I can give this a trial run this weekend.

And yes, play will be solo, like a lot of my games. And for those who are wondering, with decades of having to play solo I'm pretty good at viewing both sides of a game board with an objective view of how to respond to the "visible" information that any hidden objective game presents. That being said, would love to play BC soon via vassal with anyone if they're interested...

I have come up with a way of playing solo and it works great I don't have the rules written yet but we will play iy at Consim world expo this like we did last year if any of you are going this year. The Brits have there own AI and they use there cards.